Cartoonist

Cartoonist Jack Elrod at work. Pictured is a Sunday color page of the comic strip Mark Trail.

A cartoonist or comic strip creator is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. The term can also be applied to those who produce comic books, manga, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and, rarely, those working in animation. A person who works in animation or creates animated cartoons is generally not referred to as a "cartoonist" but as an animator.

A cartoonist traditionally sketches the picture out roughly in pencil first, before going over the sketches in black ink, using either brushes or metal nibbed pens. Cartoonists whose work is intended for online publication increasingly work in digital media.

Comic strips have traditionally been associated with main-stream newspapers. Such strips are distributed by syndicates such as the Universal Press Syndicate or the King Features syndicate. The Sunday cartoon strips, which are colored, often go to a coloring company such as American Color before they are published. Comic strips can also be collected in books. Some comic strip creators publish in the alternative press or on the internet. Comic-strip artists may also sometimes work in book-length form, creating graphic novels.

Large comic book publishers (such as Marvel or DC) utilize teams of cartoonists to produce the art (typically one doing the pencil work and another doing the inking, with the coloring added digitally by colorists). When a consistent artistic style is wanted among different cartoonists (such as Archie Comics), character model sheets may be used as reference.

Calum MacKenzie in his preface to the exhibition catalogue The Scottish Cartoonists published by the Glasgow Print Studio Gallery (1979) defined the selection criteria as being "the difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator was the same as the difference between a comedian and a comedy actor- the former both deliver their own lines and take full responsibility for them, the latter could always hide behind the fact that it was not his entire creation."

Cartoons refer commonly to COMICS, a form of graphic entertainment in a juxtaposed sequential style. A comic is based of a picture and words, often used inside word bubbles. Also they words can be under the panel, usually for single panel cartoons such as Bil Keane's Family Circus.

Comics can be specified in genres: Editorial (such as Donnesbury by Garry Treadeau), Single-Panel (such as The Far Side by Gary Larson), Gag-a-day (such as Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz), Adventure (such as Superman by Various) and Semi-Political (such as Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis).

See also

• Comic book creator
• List of cartoonists
• Webcomic
• Women in comics
• Tim Warner: A Life in the Clouds, a short comedy exploring the character of a daily comic strip creator
• Comic Creator - Flash game from Blue Peter

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